Invited to Your Story

As we begin 2013, I thought it appropriate to invite you into your story. Sounds a little silly to say, but I truly believe that for those of us hungry to discover God in our lives, we need only look as far as the story we have, and particularly its expression today.

If it is true that the friend of God and the presence of God is always found in the moment, and if God is always present with us, then we need only look as far as us to discover where God is initiating and inviting us into the transformation He imagined.  Point of clarification: God’s transformation is only ever into the person we were created to be. It is His restoring work that we refer to in transformation. But what is He restoring? I am thankful today to report that He is transforming you and me.

So today, and everyday forward from this point on, the only task we really have in terms of accessing where God is in our lives and what God is doing, is to ask some very simple questions.  The invitation of those questions is to discover where God is working and present right now.  So here are some simpler questions to contemplate:

What are you thinking about?

What are you worried about?

What are you excited about?

What do you feel?

What do you want?

Why do you want those things?

These questions might seem very individualistic and self-centered, but really they take us beyond the mindless self-centeredness of our culture and into a self-awareness of what is actually happening in us so that we can begin to discover God’s thoughts, God’s desires, God’s hopes, which inevitably will draw us out of ourselves and into a more loving relationship with others. Using the metaphor of the cross, it is the vertical that draws us into our selves; it is the horizontal that draws us out of ourselves.

My blessing for you this year of 2013 is that you will discover the invitation intrinsic in your every days. That God desires to connect with you. God does it by integrating what is actually happening in you.

What I am describing is the art of contemplation (meditation). It causes us to look within so that we are able to live not compelled by our feelings and thoughts; rather able to live in response to our feelings and thoughts in a more integrated way. Then we are not driven by our invisible forces that don’t really know what we want. Rather we will be compelled by a loving Source that accepts everything that is within you and creates space for everyone around you.